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Generating Wallet Keys

version reference

This document was written in May 2026 with reference to cardano-node and cardano-cli v11

A stake pool registration requires a funded wallet address. The address is a combination of a payment key (pays fees and deposits) and a stake key (receives rewards and anchors the pool registration).

Mainnet key management

These pages show the raw cardano-cli approach, which is appropriate for testnet. For mainnet, never generate payment or stake keys on an internet-connected machine. Production options:

  • cardano-addresses with a GPG-encrypted mnemonic on an air-gapped machine — most secure; fully offline, hardware-independent, recoverable from mnemonic
  • Hardware wallet (Ledger or Trezor via cardano-hw-cli) — keys never leave the device; convenient for signing transactions

Make sure CARDANO_NODE_SOCKET_PATH and CARDANO_NODE_NETWORK_ID are set before running any cardano-cli commands. See Running cardano-node.

Generate payment keys​

mkdir -p $HOME/pool-keys
cd $HOME/pool-keys

cardano-cli address key-gen \
    --verification-key-file payment.vkey \
    --signing-key-file payment.skey

Generate stake keys​

cardano-cli stake-address key-gen \
    --verification-key-file stake.vkey \
    --signing-key-file stake.skey

Build the stake address:

cardano-cli stake-address build \
    --stake-verification-key-file stake.vkey \
    --out-file stake.addr

Build the payment address​

The payment address combines your payment key with your stake key so that ADA sent to it accrues rewards to your stake address:

cardano-cli address build \
    --payment-verification-key-file payment.vkey \
    --stake-verification-key-file stake.vkey \
    --out-file payment.addr

Fund the address​

Query the balance:

cardano-cli query utxo --address $(cat payment.addr)

On testnet, use the Cardano faucet to get test ADA. Select the Pre-Production testnet and paste your payment.addr.

Once funded, the balance query should show something like:

                           TxHash                                 TxIx        Amount
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
531f4bec36af503654c3c6fa34ecf07e5c29f67da8e2b84c8923b8c735b011c9     0        10000000000 lovelace

Next: Register your stake address.